This time the danger’s amped up to… twelve?

The first time I fully realized that nostalgia was a real and powerful thing and, more importantly, a definite consumer force was in the early 2000s when my mind started drifting back to childhood, I first started to remember how cool the Transformers were, and I went out to buy an anniversary edition of Optimus Prime, a toy I never owned in my youth. Of course, I’m a little too young to have been there for the beginning of The Transformers, missing out on the show during its original TV run and not seeing (Naziing?) the 1986 movie until the early ‘90s, but I definitely felt its presence in each of its Saturday morning cartoon/toy/commercial successors, from M.A.S.K. to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to COPS. Remember COPS? The Central Organization of Police Specialists? Every cop had some cybernetic gimmick? “It’s Crime Fighting Time?” No? Continue reading →

When the hell did kid actors get this good?

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I was terrified. And I was terrified most of the time too. I was terrified of looking stupid, I was terrified of not knowing the answer, I was terrified of letting people down, I was terrified of never having control of the situations I was in, but most of all I was terrified of the future. I was terrified of growing up. When I was a kid, growing up seemed less to me about gaining new knowledge and abilities and taking fate into my own hands and more a series of tests, crucibles almost, whether it was finding new friends in transitioning from elementary to junior high/junior high to high school, getting through puberty without any deep scarring, passing my driver’s license exams (with the notable hindrance of being a Chinese driver), or getting into the right university and then picking the right career path. It felt like my passing or failing of each of those tests would become the building blocks that would make up who I was, cemented and irreversible whether I wanted to be that person or not. And I just never felt ready for any of it Continue reading →